Petition drive seeks to ease ballot prop process

Bill Lucas of Ferndale, the founder of Voters for Fair Use of Ballot Referendum, is seeking signatures for a ballot to end the practice by legislators of making certain new laws “referendum-proof” by attaching a minor spending provision to the statute. (For The Macomb Daily/DENNIS ELLIOTT)

A petition drive seeking to end a “gimmick” that makes certain state legislation immune from a citizen-led ballot proposal kicked off on Thursday in Royal Oak.

Led by Bill Lucas of Ferndale, the petitioners seek to end the practice by legislators of making certain new laws “referendum-proof” by attaching a minor spending provision to the statute. Since 1908, the Michigan Constitution has prevented voters from striking down budget bills that contain various appropriations.

But recent controversial laws that were made immune from the voter referendum process by attaching an appropriation include the pension tax, the right-to-work law and the replacement emergency manager law passed in last December’s lame-duck session after the preceding EM statute was voted down in November through a successful ballot proposal.

Advertisement

“Politicians are adding token amounts of spending into otherwise non-budgetary laws in order to keep them referendum-proof,” said Lucas, founder of Voters for Fair Use of Ballot Referendum. “This is side-stepping voters’ rights that have been in our constitution for 100 years.”

Lucas’ group consists of 200 to 300 supporters across the state who have agreed to volunteer in varying ways toward the collection of 323,000 petition signatures statewide. The goal is to put a referendum on the 2014 statewide ballot. To create a cushion against faulty signings, Lucas hopes to collect 450,000 signatures.

But the Voters FUBR group is operating on a shoe-string budget, without any paid petition circulators.

As a result, potential supporters such as labor unions and “good-government groups” have stayed on the sidelines, Lucas said, waiting to see if the group can generate any momentum.

At the same time, the opposition to this proposal, most likely consisting of Republican lawmakers who control the state House and Senate, are “keeping their powder dry,” said Lucas, who single-handedly collected signatures on Thursday outside the Royal Oak Post Office.

Lucas, 51, who worked for more than 20 years in the computer industry and is now a self-employed consultant, said that he is a Democrat who leans toward fiscal conservatism.

But he is particularly dismayed with the GOP majority in Lansing that passed a bill last year allowing for a wolf hunting season in northern Michigan. When animal rights activists quickly collected signatures to put a referendum on the 2014 ballot challenging the law, new bills were introduced in the House and Senate that would make the wolf hunt referendum-proof by attaching a $50,000 appropriation.

“I’m trying to emphasize,” Lucas said, “that there are issues that will come around that Republicans support but will be immune from a referendum under current practices.”